I stand there in shock, my yell bringing the rest of the guys to crowd in the doorway of Clara’s bathroom, all of us staring at the nearly foot-long chunk of hair dangling from her fist.
“If you wanted to match RJ and me, you just had to ask,” Jansen says, recovering first and taking the hank of hair from her.
Her lips turn down as she looks at herself in the mirror, the short side of her hair falling above her shoulders. “Maybe a bob?” she says, tilting her head at herself.
“I’ll get the hair cutting scissors. Emma was adamant that they were special,” Walker says, leaving the scene of the crime.
All those beautiful curls, now lying like a dead animal on the counter. I stay frozen in shock. But as Walker cuts the other side, evening the ends, I start to understand.
She’s not that girl anymore. And sometimes, a change on the outside has to match the changes we’ve gone through on the inside. Looking at my friends, I can see the same truth there. Jansen without his ponytail, but with a face full of metal. RJ’s beard and businessman haircut. Walker’s impressionistic attack on his bedroom.
My own itch to add more tattoos, ones not meant to hide the past, but to celebrate surviving it.
We’ve changed.
Clara nods in approval at the fluffy halo of curls she now sports, the weight of the length allowing them to twist tighter than before. As Jansen sweeps up the hair from the floorand brings it to the kitchen garbage while RJ gives her some product he no longer needs, it finally clicks.
All of us are painfully imperfect. Broken. Impulsive or immutable, brave or built to run away, experts and novices at the same time. But we’re all survivors. And despite all our differences, we work together, almost as if we were always meant to be like this.
Like a family.
This is my family.
I grin and join the crew, turning on the shower so Clara can wash off the prickles.
I’m one hell of a lucky man.
RJ shouts at almost the same time as Walker, the rest of us rushing upstairs, fear and hope at war as I push into RJ’s room. What they found tells me my sister is a hell of a lot smarter than I was at that age. I’ve always known that, but damn is it good to see it in action.
Walker intercepted a text to her friend, asking for a pickup, while RJ saw her sneaking out of the condo in the middle of the night on the neighbor’s security camera. Bryce, thankfully, wasn’t following her.
We find a video of her two hours later in a parking lot farther down the mountain, shivering in her coat, but safe. No obvious bruises or pained movements. I won’t fully relax until she’s back, but for the first time since the wedding, I feel like I could sleep for more than five minutes.
Sitting in the dark of RJ’s room as we wait for more text updates, none of us say anything. And unlike my father’s house, this quiet is easy. There’s no threat to it, my exhaustion and relief bringing tears to my eyes. Finally, RJ closes the window with text updates and maximizes the security camera as my baby sister practically dives into her friend’s SUV.
And I cry for real.
I don’t know if anyone sees me in the dark room, sitting behind everyone else, but I do. In a matter of hours, she’ll be safe from Bryce’s grasp. And she saved herself, like the woman I’d always hoped she’d be.
“Should she go back to your parent’s house?” Jansen asks.
“She’s always been the safest of us,” I say, wiping my face on my sleeve. “As long as her mom is there, she should be fine.”
“Should we check? A lot has changed,” Clara points out.
RJ dials my stepmother before I can stop him, handing me the phone. As soon as she hears my voice, she asks after Mattie, and giving her good news makes this shitty situation slightly better. “Oh thank God,” she sobs into the phone. “I’ll reach out and make sure they’re heading to the right place.”
“You aren’t at the estate?”
There’s a heavy silence. “No. I’m staying with a friend.”
It takes me a minute to answer. “Good. That’s good.”
We sit there, quiet as always, this woman I’ve never really known and me. She’s always been at the periphery of my life, on the sidelines at my lacrosse games and in the auditorium at the math competitions my father forced me to do once he figured out I wasn’t a complete idiot. It always felt like too little, especially when all I wanted was a protector. But I betshe remembers the names of all my friends from high school and maybe even my GPA.
Jessica wasn’t my mom, but she tried as much as she could considering the iron grip of my father. It wasn’t the same as what my mom did for me, protecting me with her body until it gave out, but maybe it really was the best she could do.
“Tell your wife I’m sorry about her father,” she says, cutting off my thoughts.
